For the Love of Rain

The sound of the rain falling from the roof slows the beating of my heart with every passing second. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a more calming sound. The late summer rain left the evening air cool enough to need a blanket, but not so much that it would stop me from spending hours under this eave if I wanted to, which I do. The thunderous gray clouds that loom in the sky overhead cast a shadow over the whole valley. I think most would find it depressing, but for me, it’s probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. There’s something so poetic about a storm. It elicits so much emotion, good or bad, with nearly every person you meet. Every time I see those dark shapes over the horizon it makes my heart skip a beat. They always seem to come along when I need them most, when my life and the world around me need a good washing. Everything bad that has happened since the clouds last arrived gets pushed away and washed into the gutters and streams the rain carves out, carrying them away forever.

I’ve begun to worship storms like gods in recent years. Living in the high deserts of southern Idaho, they are few and far between. When the area finds itself in a dry spell, I find myself mourning the absence of the earthy smell of desert rain and the thrumming of raindrops sprinting full force against my windows. I long for the days where I can sit outside and bask in the sweet smells of wet earth and the refreshing chill of the storm. Lying in the hammock that lives under cover on my parents’ back porch, I think I’ve found a new happy place. Deep within the Treasure Valley is not somewhere I’d never expected to fall in love, but I find it happening on days like these. The dark sound of thunder fills the world around me, making the ground shake and reverberating in the deepest parts of my soul, whatever a soul might be, making my whole body hum to life. I think this is how people feel when they listen to those ASMR videos I detest so much. If that’s the case, I think my opinions might lighten on them just a bit.

I love watching the rain as well. The water being pushed through the air, blurring the view beyond just so, as if nature is trying to shield us from seeing it at its most vulnerable moment. That’s somewhere the thunder and I see eye to eye. It’s as if the world is crying, nourishing the deepest parts of itself. And while it might be seen by some as ugly, with the mud it creates and the lack of activity it allows for, it always seems to come out so much better on the other side.

There is no lightning in the sky now, though it must be somewhere as the booming thunder every ten minutes or so suggests. I wish I could see it. I remember when I was young a lightning storm passed over the valley. My brother, who was probably nineteen at the time, was home for some reason I can’t remember, and he pulled my father and I out to the front yard to see the continuous bolts of lightning that lit up the sky, one right after the other. We walked out to my father’s black Ford F250 and climbed in the back, sitting up on the toolbox that laid across the bed. I think about that night all the time. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. There were trees of lightning touching down all along the horizon and branches that reached as far as they could possibly manage across the sky in front of us. The anticipated delays of the thunder reaching us, my excitement growing with every second they took to travel. We were probably waiting out there, watching the powerful show, for about fifteen minutes with every strike and boom growing closer and closer. The storm was coming our way. Out of nowhere, as if nature was giving us a grand finale, a giant purple lightning bolt etched itself across the sky breaking it open from one corner, over our heads, to the other. Its crack of electricity shook the ground. I remember being surprised no car alarms went off with how strong it was. The world that surrounded us lit up, bright as day, lasting for what felt like multiple seconds, like time had slowed just so we could bask in the glory of its truest love. Since then, almost every time I find myself out on a porch or next to an open window, bonding with nature in a way that feels so intimate and sacred, I catch myself thinking of that night. I think that’s where my love of rain and storms started. I remember appreciating them before, but not like that, not like I do now after experiencing the power that they offer at a distance that felt like mere feet in my young memory.

I could sit like this forever. Here, in my mother’s hammock under the cover on their porch, wrapped in my favorite silky soft blanket that resembles an eight-foot-tall tortilla. I can just close my eyes and listen, smell, feel as time passes by me unbothered by my presence. Logically I know I’ll only last another hour or so out here, but I would be okay if it were forever.